The Price of Victory
by Shadow0Fire
Summary: Victory always comes at a cost, but sometimes, the blunder of a CO causes the deaths of men who otherwise would have survived. When Yellow Comet's tactical genius makes that mistake, can the lone surivor of her fault ever manage to forgive her?
1. For the Sake of Victory

**It can only be a bad idea to start yet another fic when I have so many incomplete ones already, but it dawned on me that throughout Advance Wars fan fiction, although there are a lot of stories that are from the soldier's POV, there aren't any (at least I haven't seen any) that have those soldiers actually interacting with their commanders as people, especially in a negative way. So I thought, "Hell, why not?"**

**Anyway, this story begins in AW2, during the Yellow Comet mission "Show-Stopper", where Sonja has to take down the giant Black Hole Fortress guarded by eight mini-cannons.**

* * *

"We've got a straggler from an enemy recon unit on our left! Should be an easy kill!"

In response to the machine gunner's notification, the turret of the last surviving tank in Squad Seven of Yellow Comet's 32nd"Conquerors" Light Armor Battalion swiveled to the left and took aim at a lone Black Hole jeep, likely also the only survivor of its unit.

With a mighty _thump, _a shell from the yellow tank's barrel screamed towards the target. The enemy noticed the incoming projectile at the last moment, and began to go in reverse in an attempt to evade it, but to no avail.

A bright ball of fire and shredded black metal erupted from where the tank shell had impacted its target, and all that was left of the enemy vehicle was a smoldering heap of scrap and broken bodies.

A small cheer sounded throughout the small space the tank provided, and its four crewmen exchanged a series of high-fives. They may have only been a single tank in the midst of the chaos around them, but the men of that squad were doing anything and everything they could to assist in the assault against the giant black fortress that loomed above them, even after the other four tanks of Squad Seven had been decimated by enemy battle copters.

The tank driver called up to the machine gunner that had sighted the target in the thick fog that covered the battlefield.

"Nice call, Ryu! Keep your head on the swivel up there!"

The youngest member of the tank crew, Ryu Suzukai, called back an affirmative to the driver, who was also his closest friend.

"Will do, Baek!"

The crew's tank, nicknamed 'Sakura' by the squad (which certainly had nothing to do with the several pictures of lewdly dressed women posted within the tank), began to roll backwards as Baek threw it in reverse. If there was any place a lone tank didn't want to be, it was near the front line. Even though the radio operator, Keima, was constantly relaying orders from their CO to the rest of the crew, events on the battlefield occurred faster than the orders could come. Until they were specifically ordered to do something again, the plan was for the crew to retreat to a nearby friendly base and join up with a fresh squad, or failing that, to find another tank squad on the battlefield who was down a member to join up with.

The tank's turret gunner, Shen, tossed a half-eaten meat bun onto the metal floor of the vehicle as he loaded another round into Sakura's barrel.

"Man, we'd better get a promotion for this. If this kind of crap doesn't qualify us for advancement to a Medium Tank crew, I don't know what will!"

Ryu answered the burly, rude young man without taking his chocolate brown eyes off of the field around him.

"C'mon Shen, you know how stingy our Commanding Officers are. We'll be lucky if we even get a commendation for the battalion as a whole, never mind just for ourselves. Besides, why would you want one of those fat, ugly tanks when we have Sakura here?"

Shen threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Bah! Did we or did we not take out that mini-cannon when the Md. Tanks that were busting it up got jacked? If it wasn't for us, our CO would have had to throw another two or three squads of Md. Tanks at it! We even lost two of our own stickin' around to shoot the damn thing! And hey, we could have a Sakura Mk. II, right?"

Ryu was about to agree with Shen about how they had made their current Commanding Officer's job way easier by taking the opportunity to gut that cannon(he certainly didn't agree with replacing trusty Sakura with a burly Md. Tank),but he was headed off by Keima, with orders from the higher-ups.

"Throw it in drive again, Baek! We're heading up to Block J26! Orders are to wait there!"

Ryu frowned in dismay as Baek put the tank in drive and headed for the designated Block. The COs saw the battlefield from a sort-of bird's-eye view in the HQ, and the map was divided into blocks, kind of like that board game Battleship. It made commanding large armies much easier.

Unfortunately, Block J26 was right back at the front line, near the last remaining mini-cannon. Chances were that what was left of Black Hole's forces was concentrated there.

But orders were orders. Emperor Kanbei's daughter was supposed to be some sort of tactical genius, and Ryu was sure she knew what she was doing: at least he tried to convince himself that it was so.

Sakura and its crew rolled over any debris that stood between them and their destination, and they were unmolested by any enemy forces, although they could hear the sounds of combat increasing significantly as they approached their assigned position. As Ryu had expected, most of the fighting was now concentrated at Black Hole's last mini-cannon.

Along the way, the crew ran into the smoldering remains of a Yellow Comet Md. Tank squad. They were blown apart from the top down, most likely by bombers, and Ryu suddenly became acutely aware of the sound of aircraft above. For more than once in his life, he cursed the fact that yellow was such an easy color to spot against the darkness.

Ryu and his crew skirted the carnage, forcing them to take a slightly longer route to their destination. They eventually came within view of a friendly rocket unit, whose spotter was currently sighting a target with his binoculars. The five rocket trucks behind him were having their recently expended tubes reloaded by their crewmen.

Ryu's observations were interrupted when the tank radio buzzed again. Baek stopped Sakura for the moment, waiting to hear from Keima as to what their new orders were. But the operator's voice came slowly and sullenly.

"A… enemy Neotank unit is approaching Block H20. We… our orders… move to intercept."

Keima ended his relay of orders with a tone of finality, and the rest of the crew sat in stunned silence. Block H20 was exactly where the rocket unit ahead was sitting. Enemy Neotanks were approaching them, and clearly one tank and four crewmen weren't as important as those rockets getting off another volley.

Shen was the first to recover from the shock, although his voice still rung with disbelief.

"You… you can't be serious…"

Ryu climbed down into the crew cabin to cast a questioning look at Baek, who, as the driver, was seen as the leader of the crew.

"Baek, we aren't seriously going to do this?"

The somewhat older and mustached man let out a sigh of resignation.

"Orders are orders… we live to serve… and die for our country when we are told to do so."

Ryu slammed his fist into the Sakura's metal wall, busting open the skin around his knuckles.

"Don't give me that crap! We aren't expendable just because we're down a few tanks!"

Baek drove the tank forward as he answered in a factual tone.

"Those rockets are in position to target the last enemy mini-cannon. If they can get off one more volley, this battle will be over. They only need a few seconds."

"But-!"

Baek cut off Ryu's protest.

"But you don't have to stay here. We won't need a machine gunner or a radio operator for this. You and Keima should leave while you can. I'm sorry, but I need you here with me, Shen."

Sakura's usually boisterous gunner nodded somberly.

"I understand, Baek."

Ryu's voice rose in anger.

"There's no way I'm going to cut and run, but we shouldn't have to do this sacrifice crap either!"

Baek's face was as hard as stone.

"You're right; we shouldn't. But we have to. It's our duty to the empire, to our families, and to our comrades. But you don't have to stay. Neither of you do."

Baek's words seemed enough for Keima to make his decision. The man rose from his seat and climbed for the turret and exit hatch. Ryu scooted to the side to let him pass, but glared at him accusingly the whole while, as the radio operator abandoned his crew for his own sake. His only response to Ryu's glare was a hastily muttered, "I'm sorry."

Baek watched the man go, clearly not angry that Keima had chosen to save himself. He focused his grizzled eyes, which clearly did not belong on a man so young, on Ryu.

"You won't go?"

Ryu took his place at Sakura's .30 caliber machine gun, his youthful face a twisted mask of bitter anger.

"We'll ride this out together."

Those words ended the debate on duty and self-preservation, and Sakura rolled up in front of the friendly rocket unit at Block H20, now only manned by three men. The foretold enemy Neotanks came within view in moments; five, almost comical looking spheres on four legs with wheels, with exhaust ports in the rear and the most powerful mobile land-based cannon available: five grim reapers with death in their arms, and a clear victim ahead of them.

Baek pushed Sakura forward to intercept the enemy and give the rockets behind a chance to fire their volley. In desperation, fear, and hopelessness, Ryu sprayed the oncoming death machines with automatic fire, but they pinged off of the Neotanks' thick armor. Even though he knew it was pointless, Shen rotated the turret and fired a shell at the lead Neotank, hoping to at least attract its attention away from the rockets.

More irritated than actually threatened, the midnight black spherical tanks turned their barrels towards the last tank crew of the 32nd's Squad Seven, minus one man. All three men of the crew faced their death bravely, but only Ryu was able to see it straight on, with his own eyes, without the aid of a scope or radar.

Baek found it necessary to say one more thing.

"Ryu, Shen; it's been an honor to serve alongside you."

As five lethal shells exploded out of their barrels and raced towards them, Ryu cast his sullen gaze up at the sky, just in time to see the rocket volley that would end the battle.

"Honor? What honor does a shield have?"

* * *

Thirty minutes after the battle's end, Yellow Comet's three Commanding Officers surveyed the recent battleground. The field had been cleared off all Black Hole forces, and Adder had fled from the boot like the lowly snake he was.

Kanbei, Sensei, and Sonja, the mastermind of the stunning battle, stood a little ways off from where the final fighting had taken place, near the mini-cannon that had been destroyed last. Smoldering wreckage dotted the immediate surrounding landscape, but despite the grisly scars of battle, all three COs were happy to see the Black Hole fortress before them reduced to nothing more than an unmanned building, despite its size.

Kanbei could not have been more proud of his daughter. The enemy had taken massive casualties, Sonja's forces had incurred only minor or at the most average losses, and the whole battle had been won in under a month. The Emperor knew he couldn't have done better himself. And for once, he was happy to drop his nitpicking and praise his daughter for her show-stopping spectacle.

"Well done, my daughter! What an excellent victory for Yellow Comet! I could not have done better! Truly amazing!"

Sensei nodded in agreement, placing his hand on the victor's slim shoulder.

"Even I would have had trouble with this predicament Sonja, but you handled it masterfully. I knew you would become an extraordinary Commander one day, just like your father."

Sonja wasn't one to boast, but so much open praise from both of her superiors, and even more astonishingly, her father, caused her pride to swell, if only a little. None of the three cheerful COs noticed the staggering soldier shambling towards them, with blood dripping from his forearm and a nasty burn across his face. They were too busy celebrating their 'stunning' victory.

"Well, I dare say that this was an almost flawless victory. Not to boast, but calling it a perfect 'checkmate' wouldn't be a stretch…"

The voice a nearby soldier caught Kanbei's attention, if only for a moment.

"Soldier, you should seek some medical attention immediately. The field hospital is-!"

Kanbei's attention, as well as the notice of his daughter and Sensei, was fully captivated when the soldier speaking was shoved out of the way by a young man, maybe not even in his early twenties, dressed in a torn and charred tank crewman uniform. His helmet was missing, revealing jet black hair that was certainly longer than regulations permitted, plastered against his head by crimson blood.

Kanbei cast one of his sternest gazes at the man who was only a few feet away. This type of un-soldierly conduct was unacceptable.

"Soldier, what do you think you're-!?"

The Emperor's reprimand was silenced as the soldier being accosted came within range of the three COs, cocked his fist back, and loosed a straight punch; right at his daughter.

Kanbei was too stunned to react in time. Sensei had barely realized what had happened until it was already over. Sonja couldn't do anything; for once in her life, she had no idea what to do, because it all happened so quickly that the event didn't even click in her mind until she was knocked to the ground by a fist crashing into her cheek.

It was all so fast, so sudden, and so _inconceivable, _that everyone in the immediate area who had witnessed the assault stood in dumb silence. But even if anyone had managed to say a word, the soldier that had attacked his CO wouldn't have heard it anyway; he had passed out as soon as his blow had connected, and he was face down on the grass right next to the commander he had knocked out cold.

* * *

**Let's say for the sake of this story, Kanbei ****_didn't _****immediately kill this mofo with his katana. Because we all know how that would have gone down.**

**Anyway, reviews aren't necessary, but I certainly do appreciate them. I don't even know if Advance Wars has a decent community following on this site, but it'd be nice to hear from anyone still hanging around this fandom.**


	2. Consequential Conduct

**I'm probably going to have to keep these Advance Wars chapters pretty short, because unfortunately, I'm running way too many stories at one time. They're all pretty successful, so decommissioning any of them isn't really an option. Then again, this fic isn't going to be anywhere near as long as those powerhouses, so it might make no difference.**

**Anyway, thanks for reading, and a special thank you to the first reviewers of the fic, Trainalf, koryandrs, and wellhaithar. You're support and feedback is greatly appreciated.**

* * *

Pain: the body's natural alarm system. It served to warn the person when they were injured, lest they not notice a fatal wound. It let someone know when the action they were performing was a bad idea, by either burning their hand or stinging their nerves. Another of its duties was to awaken someone when they would much rather be resting, and that was the function of pain Ryu Suzukai, Private First Class in the Yellow Comet Imperial Army, was experiencing.

Ryu, forcing his eyes shut in an attempt to return to sleep, experienced waves of pain, seemingly from every possible point on his body, as he recalled the dream he had been so rudely awakened from. And oh, what a horrible dream it had been: more of a nightmare really. A mission gone horribly wrong, an unreasonable command, the deaths of Ryu's small 'band of brothers'… Needless to say, Ryu was more than happy to be awakened from that dream, even if it was due to physical suffering.

Fully aware that it would be impossible to return to sleep while his body was aching so much, Ryu peeled his eyes open, to be met with a visage of a stark white ceiling, devoid of everything except an equally pale light that reminded Ryu of hospitals. But there was no reason for him to be in a hospital…

Pushing through his pain, not even aware of what was causing it, Ryu sat up in a cot: with no idea how he had gotten there. It was an uncomfortable thing, with a stiff mattress and bland, rough white sheets, just like the ceiling. Once again, the Yellow Comet tank crewman was reminded of a hospital.

His mind felt hazy…unfocused. Everything around Ryu seemed distorted, or bent in a weird way. Believing that it was merely because he had sat up too quickly, Ryu brushed the disturbing effect away, not really wondering what the true cause of it might be.

Ryu's dizzy thoughts were unable to continue as the sound of a door opening off to his left interrupted them. Casting his foggy gaze at the source of the noise, Ryu laid eyes on a man who was most certainly a doctor, with the complete doctor package; white overcoat, stethoscope, and a mostly fake, rehearsed optimistic smile. Nevertheless, he had a Yellow Comet military uniform underneath, so that made Ryu a little more comfortable with his presence.

The doctor approached Ryu's cot with a clipboard in hand, with a look that could have been contrived as pity.

"Ah, Private Suzukai: it's good to see you in another state than you have been recently."

Ryu wasn't sure what the man meant by that, but he shrugged it off, far more curious as to where he was and why. For the moment, he couldn't remember what the last thing he had been doing was.

Cutting right to the point, seeing as how Ryu was in no mood for small talk, the doctor sat on a nearby stool and whipped out a pen.

"Just a few questions and we'll move onto the debriefing. Full name please?"

Still confused, Ryu opted to answer the questions instead of ask any himself.

"Ryugeki Suzukai."

The doctor made a quick swiping motion with his pen, most likely making a checkmark.

"Date of birth?"

"December twentieth, 661 A.D.A."

The doctor made another checkmark, glad to see that his patient still understood that the calendar kept time in years A.D.A.: After Dark Age.

"Country, Region, and city of birth?"

"Empire of Yellow Comet, Wutai NW Quadrant 4, Osenka."

Another check.

"Mother's name?"

"Shizuka Suzukai."

"Father's name?"

"Heishiro Suzukai."

"Siblings?"

"None."

With one last check, the doctor tucked his clipboard under his arm and rose to his feet.

"Well, you don't seem to have forgotten any of the important things, although it may be beneficial to conduct further tests later. If you'll follow me, I'll take you to the debriefing room."

The doctor leaned over and gently pulled an IV from Ryu's arm: one he hadn't even noticed. He then turned on his heel and slowly walked back towards the door he had come from; giving Ryu time to push through his aches and pains to follow him.

Having finally tossed the white sheet off of him, Ryu noticed that he was clothed in the standard medical patient wear, which was little more than a nurse's uniform but in yellow as opposed to blue.

Following the doctor out into the hallway, Ryu discovered that he was in fact in a hospital. Well, more of a field hospital really. He could tell it wasn't an official hospital just from the structure itself. There was no concrete or steel in the frame of the building; merely the tough, plastic, foldable, and most importantly portable material that most field HQ's were made of. It could be set up or taken down within a day.

But Ryu still didn't know _why _he was here. He couldn't remember being taken to a hospital, or being injured even. Why was he here? Why had the doctor he followed given him such a look of pity? He didn't understand.

But he was about to. This field hospital had windows, and like any window, they reflected things back at the person who looked into it. Ryu saw someone's reflection in a window, someone who looked a lot like him. But it couldn't have been. Ryu had never had such a gruesome scar stretching from the corner of his right eye to the nape of his neck. The reflection couldn't have been him…

Fingers trembling, Ryu slowly raised his hand up to his face, using the window's reflection to stroke the afflicted location, hoping it was nothing more than a trick of the light. But it wasn't. Oh God, it wasn't. His skin was charred, leathery, and rough. More importantly, it was raw, and even Ryu's own gentle touch caused him pain.

In an instant, the young soldier was remembered everything. He and his crew, expendable, had been used as a shield on the battlefield. Against a unit far more powerful than they, their orders were to distract the enemy long enough for a rocket volley to end the battle.

Oh yes, they had been successful. They had all done their damned duty. They had thrown their lives away, for the sake of what? Some foolish order? Some commander who had not done enough to ensure that their rockets would have been safe?

For some reason, Ryu no longer saw his reflection in the window. He saw Sakura's barrel, stretched out towards five black Neotanks. He saw his white knuckled hands, gripping the tank's machine gun. He saw his death, in the form of five heavy anti-tank rounds, charging forth to meet him. And a jolt, screeching metal, fire, and screams. It was there, in the window. It was a nightmare, seen in the waking world.

"Private Suzukai? Are you alright?"

Snapped out of his dreary flashback, Ryu turned his shocked gaze towards the doctor who had called him.

"How long… how long have I been like this…?"

In a detached factual manner, the doctor flipped through a few pages of his clipboard.

"You were injured in battle approximately three days ago; give or take a few hours. "

Ryu briefly considered asking about his crew, but he himself had seen their mangled and charred corpses, when he had miraculously climbed out of Sakura's wreckage, alive. He didn't know how on earth he had survived, but he figured it was either a miracle, or, being outside of the tank cabin, he was flung out by the impact before the actual explosion, sparing him. Either way, it was unfair…

"Private Suzukai, we have a lot to talk about. If you could follow me…"

* * *

Sonja, daughter of the Emperor, well-renowned tactical genius of Yellow Comet, and recent victim of an assault from a common soldier, sat at her desk in her personal study, nursing a healing bruise just under her right eye. Kanbei had seen fit to send her back to the capital for a while, considering the stress the battle had put on her and her new physical condition, although Sonja knew neither of those things would have affected her command skills.

Holding an ice-pack against the now purple bruise that marred her usually flawless skin, Sonja seethed with indignation. For what purpose could any soldier ever lay a finger on her in such a way? If not for her, many, many more men would have died in the field. Her excellent command had incurred minimal casualties!

But regardless of how angry she was, it was nothing compared to the sheer rage that had overcome her father the moment she was struck. Not that Sonja had witnessed his fury herself, being unconscious and all, but she had heard the gossip among the men as to how Kanbei had nearly killed her attacker on the spot, with his own blade. Only Sensei's intervention had saved that soldier's life… although that intervention required karate chopping Kanbei in the back of the neck (Who knew Sensei was also a martial artist?).

Either way, the soldier had been taken to a field hospital, and Sonja went back to the capital for a few days. Unfortunately, most of her time here would be spent writing condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers. Since all casualties had come from her own division, the sobering task fell to her, and Sonja hated it more than anything.

Despite the fact that she was a proficient commander, Sonja had still directly participated in very few battles. In fact, her only other battle had been with Lash a few months ago, and the casualties there had been miniscule, thanks to the excellent positioning of her troops. She had still been required to write a few condolences, but it was less than fifteen.

This time was different. It was impossible to conquer a fortress like the one Adder had guarded without substantial death. Well over a hundred of Sonja's men had been injured or killed on the field, leaving her with a far more dreadful task than before.

Of course, she could have delegated this duty to the intelligence branch; one of their more minor duties was informing families of the deaths of soldiers. But that just felt so… heartless. Every message sent to every family was the same, but with a different name plastered onto it. It was emotionless. Cold. And Sonja felt that her soldiers deserved more than that, after all they had done for their country.

So she had spent several hours already, writing condolence letters for her fallen soldiers, personalizing them so that their families knew that they meant more to the army than expendable grunts. She had made it through roughly half of the casualty report so far, written up by her Intel experts. She couldn't imagine how grueling their task was, to walk around a battlefield to identify and count their dead comrades. Maybe they just blocked out the pain and sorrow?

Sonja finished another letter for a man named Shingo, who had been one of the first infantrymen deployed on the field. Just after capturing a neutral base, he had been gunned down by an enemy recon unit, although the rest of his squad had escaped unscathed.

Flipping the page, Sonja came across one of the parts she dreaded more than any other. The page was marked, 'Unit Eliminated', meaning that every soldier in a unit was either dead or missing.

Carefully reading through the preliminary report, Sonja discovered that said eliminated unit had been a tank squadron; Squad Seven of the 32nd Light Armor Battalion. All five tanks, destroyed: all twenty crewmen, dead or missing. Every one of their faces stared up at Sonja from the pages of the report, seemingly accusing her of allowing them to die.

Trying to push the morbid thoughts from her mind, regardless of how impossible that was considering the task at hand, Sonja scanned the names of the tank crew. Baek Drosai, killed by an enemy Neotank volley. Shen Woo, killed in exactly the same fashion. Keima Kankuro, missing in action, and the machine gunner, Ryugeki Suzukai, was missing as well. Neither of the last two's bodies had been found.

Something caught Sonja's attention though, and it took her a few moments to figure out what it was. She didn't know many of her soldiers on a personal basis, but someone on this crew looked familiar…

And then it hit her, just like that fist had earlier. There was a reason this crew looked familiar: a reason why the Squad number rang a bell in her mind. It was one of the last units she had commanded on the field during the battle… the very tank crew she had used as a shield for her besieged rockets. That was why this page stood out to her. Why these four men seemed to have even more accusing glares than all of the rest. Why she recognized the last man in the crew, Ryugeki Suzukai.

In a moment, Sonja understood why she had a terribly painful bruise on her face, and why any soldier could find fault with her command. It was because this soldier _had_found legitimate fault in her strategy, as he himself was a victim of her mistake…

This meant that there was a mistake in the after action report. Someone labeled as missing was in fact recuperating in a field hospital right now, and Sonja now had a legitimate reason to take a break from her dreadful writing.

* * *

"Court-martialed?"

Ryu sat in a small, blank white room, completely devoid of decoration beyond a small metal table and two chairs. Ryu sat in one of these chairs, painfully aware of the scar that marred his face, across from a captain from disciplinary services. He was an older, clean-shaven man with black hair and almost equally dark eyes, with a somewhat crooked nose and tendency to maintain a completely neutral face at all times.

"Surely you didn't expect anything less, Private? You physically assaulted a Commanding Officer, who, I'm sure I don't need to remind you, was also the Emperor's one and only daughter. If not for CO Sensei, a court-martial would have been the least of your worries."

Ryu had a pretty firm grip on what the captain meant by that. The Emperor's daughter was his pride and joy, the 'apple of his eye.' He would do anything to protect or failing that, avenge her. Ryu couldn't think of any incident where the Emperor had used his sword on someone, but he was sure he would have been the first if there had been no intervention.

Even Ryu felt slightly regretful of the whole thing. Slightly. His brain told him that everyone made mistakes, even the genius daughter of Emperor Kanbei. But his gut told him that it shouldn't have happened. Ryu felt, rather he _knew, _that the death of his comrades could have been avoided: should have been avoided. Someone screwed up, when they shouldn't have. And who was that? Who else could it have been but the CO in charge of that battle?

Still, Ryu had slugged a girl at least two or three years younger than him in the face with all of his might. Regardless of how bitter and angry he was towards her, he still felt a little bad about that.

"What will happen to me after I'm court-martialed?"

With a complete poker face, the disciplinary captain across from Ryu laid down the facts.

"You'll be dishonorably discharged, for sure. You definitely won't receive any military benefits. Beyond that, your charges will most likely be left to the higher-ups. I would just pray that the Emperor has more important things to do than attend your hearing. Now, I need you to fill out this paperwork…"

The captain slid a sheet towards Ryu, and handed him a pen. Looking down at it, Ryu saw that it was nothing more than filing for the records, keeping track of a dishonorable soldier. With numb fingers and s heavy heart, the wounded warrior touched the pen to the paper, and began to scribble out his own demise.

* * *

**Well this was longer than expected… I don't know how many chapters this will be, but the story will probably be a good, decent length. There will be at least five chapters, but chances are that there will be more.**

**Anyway, I know most of you readers of this story hardly know me, at least not to the extent that the devoted fans of my larger stories do, but if you're interested in having a say so about what story I write next in the future, I have twenty+ future stories in great detail on my profile. Consequently, I also have a poll for leaving your opinion on what you want next. And yes, there is another AW story on there.**


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